RuPay is a combination of two words – Rupee and Payment. RuPay Card is an Indian version of credit/debit card. It is very similar to international cards such as Visa/Master.

Who initiated it?

National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) promoted by RBI on 26 March 2012 launched an Indian payment gateway system as an alternate solution to Mastercard and Visa which are widely used across the world and have dominance even in India.

How will it work?

RuPay debit cards are similar any other debit cards that you might hold now. You can access them in the 1.45 lakh ATMs and 8.75 lakh POS terminals across the country. It will also be accepted on 10,000 e-commerce websites. All major public sector banks, including SBI, have started issuing these cards to all their customers. The card also comes with a high end technology chip named EMV (Europay, Master Card and Visa) especially for high end transactions. It also has an embedded micro processor circuit with information about the card holder.

What are the Benefits of RuPay card?

Lower transaction cost - Since every transaction through RuPay will take place within India, the banks will have to pay less service charge to the payment gateway as compared to Visa, MasterCard and others. For e.g. If a person does a transaction of say Rs. 2,000 then banks will have to pay around Rs.. 2.50 when RuPay is used whereas for the same transaction amount, Visa or Mastercard will charge Rs. 3.25. Technically speaking, transactions done through international cards is processed in foreign country which involves higher charge which helps in generating profit for Visa/MasterCard whereas RuPay transactions would happen domestically so charge would be less.